Theories
by Gray Jedi 4000
Summary: Two of my hypotheses and explanations, both controversial. This is not a story, and these theories contain rather adult themes. If you are shocked or hurt, don't say I didn't warn you. Both theories are now outdated, and I will possibly write updated theories later.
1. Ozai

**Warning: Not for the faint of heart.**

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The first thing you need to know is that Ozai's father, Azulon, was a insatiable predator, and his prey was the young and beautiful. (This means that Ozai has a lot more siblings than just Iroh, but I'll get to that in a later post. Maybe.) As you can imagine, this has problems for certain people - especially males who are attractive and readily available. Like, oh, I don't know, Ozai himself.

The second thing you need to know is that Sozin's presence was the thing holding Azulon back. When Ozai was nine, and just beginning to show signs of attractiveness, Grandfather Sozin died and left behind his favorite grandchild to deal with the awfulness of what Azulon would be able to do, now that he was Fire Lord and had no more restraints.

The abuse first started a few days after Sozin's death, once Azulon was crowned Fire Lord. Azulon called a young, grieving, actually rather sensitive Ozai into his throne room. Alone. If you don't get what's happening, stop reading.

After the first incident, Ozai ran to his older brother Iroh for safety. He managed to get out a few incoherent words before he stopped speaking entirely.

For _seventeen years_.

During that time, Ozai did not speak, could not firebend, would not even let himself _think,_ because every time he managed to get a thought started, he would run into a wall of pain and fear placed there so casually by his father. He wasted away, becoming barely more than a wraith. Cheeks sunken. Ribs visible. Eyes staring ahead blankly, leaking silent tears on and off. He did not move unless someone guided him. He did not eat unless someone told him to. He was the perfect little slave.

Hope finally came when he was twenty-six, when his father mentioned a possible escape route. An idea took root in his mind, a small spark burning through the block to reach the scared little boy beyond. He took a hold of that spark, even though it burned his fingers, and clinged to it for dear life.

His first words in seventeen years was to his father after the meeting. "I wish to be married."

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 **I don't mean to force my headcanon on anyone, nor my views or beliefs. I do not try to excuse Ozai's actions. They were awful, awful crimes against his children - both of them. I only wish to send my take on Ozai out into the unknown, and hope perhaps someone else grabs hold of it and rethinks the uniformly negative light we all put Fire Lord Ozai into.**

 **It is simply my headcanon.**


	2. Serial and Jet

**This is rather strange, and will probably be denounced as impossible by most of the fandom, but here goes.**

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The farthest back we need to go in Jet's family tree is Fire Lord Azulon. Yes, you read that right. Fire Lord Azulon, father of Fire Lord Ozai and Lord Iroh, is Jet's grandfather. As I have explained my earlier theory, Azulon is "an insatiable predator, and his prey was the young and beautiful." In Jet's mother's (we'll get to her later) case, the 'young and beautiful' was a clueless Water Tribe immigrant who ran from home after refusing to marry the man she was paired with. She had no idea that she was falling from the frying pan into the fire.

Jet's mother was born to the taken immigrant - a half-Water Tribe, half-Fire Nation anomaly. Her mother died in childbirth, and she was raised until the age of four by a midwife who often took in motherless children and was too busy to give them all names. She lived on the streets, fighting other urchins for scraps of food. No-one, including her, cared about her royal father - Azulon already had so many children living on the streets, they were almost commonplace. However, they _did_ care about her firebending, which made her very dangerous to cross. Not to mention her almost inhuman disregard for life. Once she was old enough to know how babies are made, she started working on and off as a prostitute. Amazingly, she only had one child - a boy she named Jet, from an Earth Kingdom bounty hunter she didn't bother to learn the name of.

Somewhere in her late teens to early twenties, she started killing. Always high-profile, always children. She wanted to cast the blame on her father, whose knowledge and position in her mind had been corrupted by the casual way he took young women and her time on the streets, dragging him down into public contempt. She did not want her father to become a martyr.

She gained notoriety. The nameless girl who grew up on the streets was now a feared murderer. _Serial,_ the rumors called her. Everyone whispered of the bodies of the children, taken apart, the organs taken out and put in patterns, bodily fluids used to decorate the walls of the crime scene. Murmurs began to break out - why wouldn't Azulon address the problem? Why hadn't the killer been caught yet?

 _Serial,_ she thought. She finally had her name.

All the while, she raised her child, loving him as much as she could in the ways she knew how. Jet loved her back, loved his mother as she taught him how to fight, how to firebend, how to read the characters she knew. She kissed him on the forehead, called him baby, promised she wouldn't let anyone hurt him.

One day, Jet innocently asked his mother why she so often came home with rough hands and ragged red dress and long, serrated knife bloodstained and slick. She smiled at him as she washed her hands and her knife with a little precious water.

"I'm getting revenge," she told him. "On your grandfather, for what he did to your grandmother and so many other young, helpless women." For what he did to your uncle, she did not say. Serial did not know exactly what had been done to Prince Ozai - to her half brother - but she knew something had been done. Something to take away his voice, steal his spark, starve him into submission.

Jet was soon to turn eight. Serial was getting close to her goal. She could feel it in the tension of whispers, the askance looks given to everyone by noblemen, the fear on children's faces as they clung to their parent's robes. _Soon,_ she thought, smiling to herself as she held her son's hand.

Just as she was ready to achieve everything she had been working towards, someone beat her to it.

Soon after, the new Special Ops came to her door. Her friendliness with her dear brother had cost her her life, she knew. She didn't care. As long as her child was safe.

Serial spotted them coming, three figures in black closing in on her hovel. She peered through the rip in the old cloth that served as a window. "Run to safety," she told her son.

They entered her hovel, steeping through the doorway one by one. Three figures indeed, one a male, tall, black-haired, gold-eyed. A firebender for sure. Another was a female, short and stocky, dark-brown hair. An earthbender, perhaps? There was an assortment of rock knives on her belt.

The last, the center, was a woman. Older than her. Dark-skinned. Blue-eyed. Water skin on her belt. A waterbender. She was more closely related, perhaps, to this woman than to either of the others, brother and sister they may be.

She knelt. She knew what was coming.

The firebender - Kuzo, perhaps? She can't quite remember his name. - spoke. "Any last requests?"

"Did he suffer?" is all she said.

They didn't have to ask who she meant. "He was poisoned, and bled out from an extensive wound in his gut. So, yes, he suffered."

"That is all," Serial said. Jet was already heading to the palace, if he knew what was good for him.

The waterbender - Kya, she remembered. She thought there was another Kya in the family, down in the Southern Water Tribe. - stepped forward. "I'll make this quick and hopefully painless. That's all I can do, sister."

Serial nodded and closed her eyes. There were certain respects one paid to a family member, even one so errant as she.

There was cold on her neck. Then hot pain.

Then nothing at all.

Jet's eyes widened from behind the tear in the back cloth. They'd just _killed Mom!_ He stumbled back. Did Uncle know? Had he done this? Jet couldn't risk it. He turned and ran - not to the palace, not to Uncle, but down to the docks. He had to get _out_ of here. He ran and ran, sneaking up the board of a vessel that he'd overheard was making a stop in the Earth Kingdom. Just in time - it was already lifting the walk and sending off. He hid from the inspectors as they came for one last quick check. Then they started moving, and his fate was set.

His mind dragged back to the image of his mother's headless body thumping to the floor, blood pooling in front of the severed neck. No. He dragged it back. He didn't want to think about that. He didn't want to be a part of his family anymore.

Jet was going to the Earth Kingdom, wasn't he? A full ocean away! He could be a new person there. A boy who was capable of taking care of himself, a boy who could be strong in the face of death.

Yes, yes. He could be that boy. That boy wouldn't have the memory of a corpse in the middle of the floor. That boy wouldn't be a firebender. That boy could lead, would get what he wanted.

Yes, he could be that boy.

In the Earth Kingdom.


End file.
